Jeff Bezos will blast into space next month on Blue Origin's first flight with a crew, becoming the first person in the world to ride his own rocket
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Outdoing his fellow billionaires in daredevilry, Jeff Bezos will blast into space next month when his Blue Origin company makes its first flight with a crew.
The 57-year-old Amazon founder and richest person in the world by Forbes' estimate will become the first person to ride his own rocket to space.
Bezos announced his intentions Monday and, in an even bolder show of confidence, said he will share the adventure with his younger brother and best friend, Mark, an investor and volunteer firefighter. He said that will make it more meaningful.
Blue Origin's debut flight with people aboard — after 15 successful test flights of its reusable New Shepard rockets — will take place on July 20, a date selected because it is the 52nd anniversary of the first moon landing by Apollo 11's Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
The Bezos brothers will launch from remote West Texas alongside the winner of an online charity auction. There’s no word yet on who else might fill the six-person capsule during the 10-minute flight that will take its passengers to an altitude of about 65 miles (105 kilometers), just beyond the edge of space, and then return to Earth without going into orbit.
Bezos said he has dreamed of traveling to space since he was 5.
“To see the Earth from space, it changes you. It changes your relationship with this planet, with humanity. It’s one Earth,” Bezos said in an Instagram post. “I want to go on this flight because it’s a thing I’ve wanted to do all my life. It’s an adventure. It’s a big deal for me.”
Added his brother: “I wasn’t even expecting him to say that he was going to be on the first flight, and then when he asked me to go along, I was just awestruck.”
Bezos will step down as Amazon's CEO 15 days before liftoff. He announced months ago that he wants to spend more time on his rocket company as well as his newspaper, The Washington Post.
His stake in Amazon stands at $164 billion, which will make him by far the wealthiest person to fly to space.
Until now, thrill-seeking billionaires have had to buy capsule seats from the Russian space program or, more recently, Elon Musk's SpaceX, which plans its first private flight in September. These orbital trips, generally lasting several days, with visits to the International Space Station, have cost tens of millions of dollars per person.
The flight by Blue Origin's New Shepard capsule, named for Alan Shepard, the first American in space, will last five minutes less than Shepard's history-marking suborbital ride aboard a Mercury capsule in 1961.
But Blue Origin's capsule is 10 times roomier with a huge window at every seat — the biggest windows ever built for a spacecraft, in fact.
The company, based in Kent, Washington, is working to develop an orbital rocket named after John Glenn, the first American to circle the Earth.
The Bezos flight will officially kick off the company's space tourism business. The company has yet to start selling seats to the public or even to announce a ticket price for the short trips, which provide about three minutes of weightlessness.
Blue Origin’s launch and landing site is 120 miles southeast of El Paso, close to the Mexican border. After the capsule separates, the rocket returns to Earth and lands upright, to be used again. The capsule, also reusable, descends under parachutes.
Virgin Galactic’s Richard Branson — a "tie-loathing," mountain-climbing, hot-air-ballooning daredevil — also plans to ride into space aboard his own airplane-launched rocketship later this year after one more test flight over New Mexico. Virgin Galactic completed its third test flight into space with a crew two weeks ago; the company doesn't want him climbing aboard until the craft is thoroughly proven.
The 70-year-old Branson on Monday offered congratulations to Bezos, a tame, bookish Wall Streeter by comparison. Branson tweeted that their two companies "are opening up access to space — how extraordinary!”
Like Blue Origin, Branson's company will send paying customers to the lower reaches of space on up-and-down flights, not Earth-orbiting rides.
Musk's SpaceX already has transported 10 astronauts to the space station for NASA and sold several seats on private flights. Musk himself has yet to commit to going into space, though he has repeatedly said he wants to die on Mars, just not on impact.
Until recently, Blue Origin had been criticized by some for proceeding too slowly, especially when compared with SpaceX. Bezos adopted as the company's motto “Gradatim ferociter,” Latin for “Step by step, ferociously,” and had it emblazoned on the so-called lucky cowboy boots he wears to his company's space launches.
“Blue Origin, admirably, has gone about it carefully and has built a reliable and less ambitious vehicle and is likely to succeed,” the director of Vanderbilt University’s aerospace design lab, Amrutur Anilkumar, said in an email Monday. “It is noteworthy that Bezos feels comfortable taking his brother for a ride; that is probably the best exclamation for safety and reliability.”
While Blue Origin’s and SpaceX’s capsules are fully automated, Virgin Galactic has two pilots in the cockpit for every spaceflight. A 2014 accident left one pilot dead and the other seriously injured.
As for the seat that is being auctioned off, Blue Origin opened online bidding on May 5, the 60th anniversary of Shepard's flight. It's up to $2.8 million.
The auction will conclude Saturday, with the winning amount donated to Club for the Future, Blue Origin's education foundation, which encourages youngsters to pursue careers in science. Nearly 6,000 people from 143 countries have taken part in the auction.
In an Instagram video posted by Bezos, Mark Bezos' reaction when his brother invited him on the flight was: "Are you serious? ... Seriously? My God!”
“What a remarkable opportunity not only to have this adventure, but to be able to do it with my best friend," the younger brother said.
New NASA Challenge to Fund and Test Small Spacecraft Technologies
NASA is inviting commercial businesses, academic institutions, entrepreneurs, and other innovators to compete in a new challenge that will provide payload development funding and access to suborbital flight testing for innovative space technologies. The NASA TechLeap Prize aims to rapidly advance technologies for space exploration and Earth observation.
The current phase of NASA TechLeap Prize, Autonomous Observation Challenge No. 1, is looking for SmallSat observation technologies that can autonomously detect, locate, track, and collect data on transient events – both on Earth and beyond. These technologies could advance optical communications networks, aiding lunar exploration in detecting, tracking, and establishing line-of-sight communications with any lander, rover, or object on the Moon.
The NASA TechLeap Prize addresses gaps that are of significant interest to the small spacecraft research community. “Advancements in autonomous observation technologies will be critical for many future missions that rely of the advantages of small spacecraft,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for both the Flight Opportunities and Small Spacecraft Technology programs. “Through this competition, we are hoping to truly change the pace of space by using suborbital testing to increase the speed with which we can advance and de-risk technologies to the point where they are mission-ready.”
Participants must register for the TechLeap Prize by July 28, 2021. Submissions are due Aug. 11, 2021. Up to four winners may receive awards of up to $500,000 each to build their payloads. NASA intends to provide winners who successfully develop their payload with a suborbital flight test on a NASA-contracted flight services provider.
The NASA TechLeap Prize is funded by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, which helps a wide range of space technologies reach maturity more quickly by testing them on suborbital flights. These tests can provide critical data and insight into how a technology is expected to perform in its intended space environment, as well as help reduce risk prior to much more costly orbital missions. For this challenge, Flight Opportunities is working closely with NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program to address gaps that are of significant interest to the small spacecraft research community.
NASA’s Flight Opportunities program, part of the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) at the agency’s Headquarters in Washington and managed at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California, is conducting the challenge. Flight Opportunities rapidly demonstrates promising technologies for space exploration, discovery, and the expansion of space commerce through suborbital testing with industry flight providers. The program matures capabilities needed for NASA missions and commercial applications while strategically investing in the growth of the U.S. commercial spaceflight industry.
NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program is also part of STMD and is managed at NASA’s Ames Research Centerin California’s Silicon Valley. The program expands the ability to execute unique missions through rapid development and demonstration of capabilities for small spacecraft applicable to exploration, science, and the commercial space sector.
The NASA Tournament Lab, part of the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program within STMD, is managing the challenge. The program supports public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs. Leveraging its NASA Open Innovation Services 2 vehicle, NASA contracted with Carrot, who is serving in the role of prize administrator for the competition.
To boldly go where no germs will follow: The role of the COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection
© Ales Utouka
The COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection is working around the clock to ensure that space exploration is safe and sustainable, preventing both forward and backward contamination during missions
As our ventures into the “final frontier” accelerate—this year alone saw three separate missions arriving at Mars—and we land on nearby planets, the challenge is to make sure that we do not bring potentially dangerous material home to Earth (backward contamination) or indeed carry anything from Earth that may jeopardise the scientific exploration of these worlds (forward contamination). Planetary protection against biological contamination is an international concern receiving renewed attention due to new findings and the emergence of commercial actors.
But how can we ensure that space exploration is both safe and sustainable?
Nations with their own space agencies and space exploration missions are responsible for their space activities under the United Nations Outer Space Treaty of 1967, including by governmental and non-governmental actors. The COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy, while not legally binding under international law, is the only internationally agreed planetary protection reference for spacefaring nations in compliance with Article IX of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967.
COSPAR
The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) is part of the International Science Council, a non-governmental organisation that brings together scientific unions and research councils from around the world. COSPAR was formed at the dawn of the space age to promote international scientific research in space and provide a neutral forum for the discussion of challenges to scientific exploration, unencumbered by geopolitical considerations. One of its core activities is to develop, maintain and promote a Policy on Planetary Protection in the form of implementation guidelines.
The COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection
The dedicated COSPAR Panel on Planetary Protection (PPP) regularly reviews the latest scientific research to adapt its planetary protection policy. The most recent updates to the Policy were approved in June 2020, and a major one concerning the Moon is coming up. The COSPAR PPP currently has 21 members representing space agencies and experts from the scientific community.
The Panel endeavours, through workshops, meetings and at COSPAR Assemblies, to provide an international forum for the exchange of information on best practices for adhering to the COSPAR planetary protection requirements. Through COSPAR, the Panel informs and interacts with the international community, including holding an active dialogue with the private sector.
COSPAR’s PPP is concerned with possible biological interchange during exploration of the solar system and aims to ensure that the scientific research involved is not compromised through terrestrial contamination, to safeguard investment in space science and exploration, while also protecting the Earth’s environment from any potential hazards of returning samples by a mission to a solar system object.
Enabling space exploration
The PPP’s primary objective is to develop and promulgate a clearly delineated policy and associated requirements to protect against the harmful effects of such contamination. This policy must be based on the most current, peer-reviewed scientific knowledge, and is intended to enable exploration, not prohibit it. Planetary protection requirements are not cast in stone and evolve over time as new information becomes available (updates to the Policy are published in COSPAR’s journal Space Research “Today.”) The Panel does not specify how to adhere to the COSPAR Planetary Protection Policy—this is for the engineering judgment of the organisation responsible for the planetary mission.
Categorisation for space missions
Space research involves missions driven by private organisations and by national or international space agencies who send a variety of craft into space to enhance our understanding of its origin and evolution. Some will orbit a planetary body and others, such as the lunar, Martian or icy moon such as the future lunar, Martian or icy moon missions, will land on their surfaces. They will then analyse the surface or internal environment, searching for traces of life. COSPAR PPP’s main goal is to prevent such missions from carrying terrestrial microorganisms to the target destination (forward contamination) as well as preventing any contamination from extra-terrestrial material returned to Earth for laboratory analysis (backward contamination). Using a categorisation approach, COSPAR PPP determines whether each mission is low risk or high risk. The five Categories of Planetary Protection outline the recommended measures that an agency should apply to each mission.
Low-risk space missions
Missions deemed to be of lowest risk (Category I) are those to a target not of direct interest for research into evolution or the origin of life. These can include flyby, orbiter and lander missions but to destinations where no specific protections are required, e.g., currently the Moon, Venus, gas giants and some satellites. A special categorisation was recently issued by the PPP for an unrestricted Earth return from Mars’ moon Phobos by the JAXA MMX mission, as studies showed that samples would not pose a threat for our biosphere after careful handling.
High-risk missions
Higher categories include bodies that are of interest for scientific research about the origin of life. Category III, IV and V missions include those targeting bodies (such as Mars, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Saturn’s moon Enceladus) which could compromise future missions by causing contamination from Earth microorganisms, and also those that are Earth-return and which may carry extra-terrestrial materials.
For such missions, the highest degree of control is applied to ensure that a minimum level of “bioburden” (the number of bacteria living on an unsterilised surface) is brought along. Planetary protection technologies are constantly being improved for cleaning and sterilising spacecraft and handling soil, rock and atmospheric samples.
Preventing planetary contamination without curbing exploration
The COSPAR Policy on Planetary Protection is vital for safeguarding our exploration of outer space and scientific research without contamination of planetary bodies or risk for the Earth’s biosphere. The COSPAR PPP works through a variety of hypothetical scenarios to ensure future scientific research is not compromised. These include whether, after advanced exploration and research, any signs of life found by a rover on Mars is Martian rather than terrestrial contamination, and whether potential extra-terrestrial life brought to Earth is sufficiently quarantined before scientific analyses. They aim not to stifle space exploration and research, but rather to ensure it continues unimpeded through adequate protections and information imparted to scientists and stakeholders around the world.